So let's say, hypothetically ( ), I decide to apply a standard configuration from the File menu without remembering to back up my current configuration. Is there any way to then retrieve my old custom commands?

I can see that there are old command group names listed in the srgs folder as *.cfg files. Are those of any use to me now?

... I've tried searching the forum and the wiki but haven't found any tips on this situation, except the obvious: "Make a backup first, dumbass".  

The cfg files by themselves are not useful.  They are just the cached precompiled speech recognition files (used to speed up loading VC), but they need to match a voicecommands.xml file to work.

If you have windows recovery properly configured you can use "previous versions" to get your xml back.  I find this extremely useful!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/previous-versions-files-faq#1TC=windows-7

Ah yes. Well. Ahem. Er. ...

I don't have that enabled.

BUT: Good news. I was able to rename the file called 'voicecommands.backup' which had a date modified time stamp from a couple hours ago (i.e, renamed it to voicecommands.xml), and that successfully restored my previous commands. Hurrah!  

I assume that if I'd edited the new command tree and saved it, however, that would have overwritten that backup file, though, right? So it's not something to count on.

If this happens to others: I also had to re-enable the various plugins that my previous custom commands used, since my options.xml file was also overwritten when I applied the standard configuration.